by Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender, Mississippi Today
May 12, 2025

Pettus shares a few war stories with Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender, including her dealings with the irascible former Gov. Kirk Fordice. 

READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Podcast: Mississippi Today welcomes longtime veteran Mississippi journalist Emily Wagster Pettus as its new senior editor. appeared first on mississippitoday.org

by Bobby Harrison, Mississippi Today
May 11, 2025

The Mississippi Constitution gives the governor the sole authority to call a special session and to set the agenda.

It is one of the few powers granted to the governor by the Mississippi Constitution.

But in reality, the special session power the governor possesses can be limited by legislators if they so choose.

Granted, the Legislature cannot convene a special session. Once legislators end a regular session, they cannot return unless called by the governor or until the next regularly scheduled session. Lawmakers are dependent on the governor to call a special session to allow them to take up a state budget, which they remarkably were unable to pass during the regular session that ended in early April.

Many believe that the governor will have more authority over the budget in special session than in regular session. For instance, can the Legislature consider a bill to fund special projects throughout the state if Gov. Tate Reeves does not include what is known by many as the “Christmas tree bill” in the agenda? Debate over that special projects bill appears to be the major sticking point preventing a budget agreement between the House and Senate. The House wants a Christmas tree bill. The Senate does not.

In 2008, then-Republican Gov. Haley Barbour called the Legislature into special session to levy a tax on hospitals to fund a $90 million Medicaid deficit. House leaders instead tried to pass a “compromise” bill that levied a tax on cigarettes, combined with a smaller hospital tax.

Republicans screamed that the cigarette tax could not be considered because it was not part of Barbour’s call. Then-Speaker Billy McCoy ruled that the governor could set the agenda for the special session — to provide more funding for Medicaid — but could not dictate how that funding was derived.

The whole issue became moot because Democrats could not garner the votes to pass their proposal. Yet, they also were able to block the hospital tax increase.

The end result was that the special session ended without the Medicaid funding issue being resolved. The issue lingered for more than a year.

In the 82-day 2002 special session, then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove placed on the agenda the issue of providing protection from lawsuits for medical providers. He said he would expand the agenda to allow lawsuit protection for all businesses after the medical provider bill reached his desk.

But the Senate leaders said the governor could not limit how they addressed lawsuit protection. They wanted to do it all in one bill.

But the House, not as set on what some called “tort reform,” said it could only address the issue of lawsuit protection for medical providers because of the agenda set by the governor.

For several days, the two chambers literally sat and stared at each other.

Finally, then-House Speaker Tim Ford asked for an official opinion from Attorney General Mike Moore on whether lawsuit protection could be considered for all businesses. Moore’s opinion said that only lawsuit protection for medical providers could be considered since that was the limit of the governor’s call.

The AG’s opinion did not carry the force of law. But the Senate leaders, who said they did not agree with the opinion, finally acquiesced and worked with the House to pass lawsuit protection for medical providers. And then, Musgrove, true to his word, expanded the call to give legislators the ability to consider additional protections for businesses.

The bottom line is that lawmakers have substantial leeway in a special session to interpret the governor’s call. By the same token, the governor can veto legislation if he thinks the Legislature exceeded his call or not sign the bill and ask the courts to block the legislative action.

But the Mississippi Supreme Court has been reluctant to get involved in the inner workings of the Legislature.

For instance, the state constitution gives any legislator the option to have a bill read before final passage. That provision has been used as a method to slow down the legislative process or as a form of protest. In recent years, the legislative leadership countered by using a computer application to have the bills read at a super high speed. The program, spitting out words at an incomprehensible speed, was dubbed the “demon chipmunk.”

The leadership was sued, claiming the demon chipmunk speed violated the state constitution.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the legislative leadership and the demon chipmunk.

The majority opinion read, “We hold the court lacks constitutional authority to interfere in the procedural workings of the Legislature, even when those procedures are constitutionally mandated.”

If Supreme Court justices are not going to strike down the demon chipmunk, would they get involved in a fight over the interpretation of the governor’s special session agenda?

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Control of a special session is the governor's superpower, but is it really that super? appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The article maintains a neutral tone while exploring the power dynamics between Mississippi’s governor and the legislature regarding special sessions. It does not advocate for a specific political stance but rather provides historical context and examples of how the governor’s authority over special sessions has been exercised and contested. The article focuses on the intricacies of governance and the balance of power, presenting both the limitations and potential for conflict in the special session process without showing clear bias toward either political party or perspective.

by Ames Alexander, Floodlight, Mississippi Today
May 10, 2025

This story was originally published by Floodlight.

Renewable energy in the United States has surged to unprecedented levels, with the combined power generated by solar, wind and geothermal more than tripling over the past decade, according to a new report by a network of state environmental groups.

The growth has slashed harmful greenhouse gas emissions, made the nation’s energy system more resilient and prevented thousands of premature deaths from power plant pollution, according to the report by Environment America.

But this progress faces increasing resistance as President Donald Trump in his first 15 weeks in office has begun to dismantle federal policies and spending aimed at slowing climate change.

It’s all happening at a time of heightened concern among environmentalists. Despite an international accord to lower greenhouse gas emissions, the atmosphere now contains record levels of heat-trapping gasses. All 50 states have warmed since the first Earth Day in 1970, according to a new analysis by Climate Central, an independent nonprofit group that researches and disseminates information about climate change and its effects.

Among the highlights of the Environment America report:

• The amount of solar energy produced in 2024 — enough to power 28 million homes — was nearly eight times higher than a decade earlier. Solar power production increased 27% from 2023 to 2024.

• Wind produced even more energy — enough to power 42 million homes in 2024. The amount of power from wind has more than doubled over the past decade.

• Wind, solar and geothermal energy accounted for 19% of all retail sales of electricity last year, according to the federal data used to produce the report.

• The amount of utility-scale battery storage in the United States grew 63% from 2023 to 2024 — and a more than 80-fold increase over the past decade.

• Nearly 3.3 million electric vehicles were on U.S. roads at the end of 2023 – a 25-fold increase from 2014. The number of electric vehicle charging ports, meanwhile, grew to more than 218,000 at the end of 2024 – six times more than 2015 and a 24% increase from just the year before.

More than 1.5 million plug-in electric vehicles were sold in 2024, an increase of more than 7% over the previous year, according to Argonne National Laboratory. Nearly 300,000 new electric vehicles were sold in the United States during the first quarter of 2025 — an 11% increase over the same period last year, Kelley Blue Book data shows.

“The growth of these clean energy technologies is now clearly benefiting people in all 50 states, and they’re really providing the building blocks of a clean energy system free from dirty and inefficient fuels,” said Johanna Neumann, senior director of the Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy, which is led by Environment America. “And the more that we can accelerate the progress that we’ve seen, the better it’ll be for our health and for our environment.” 

Most of the states that have seen the biggest percentage increases in wind, solar and geothermal energy over the past decade are in the South — and most are Republican states, according to a Floodlight analysis of the federal data used in the Environment America report. 

Some of those states, including Mississippi and Alabama, still rank low in the total amount of renewable energy produced. But other right-leaning Southern states, including Florida and North Carolina, now rank above most others in terms of the total renewable energy generated.

Billions in clean-energy projects canceled 

For those concerned about climate change, however, a new analysis points to a more worrisome sign: Almost $8 billion in investments — including 16 large-scale factories and other projects — were canceled, closed or downsized in the first three months of 2025, according to the report by E2, a nonpartisan group of business leaders who advocate for sound environmental policies.

Likely contributing to the cancellations: market uncertainty and the debate in Congress over repealing tax credits and other incentives for clean energy projects. The $7.9 billion in investments withdrawn this year are more than three times the amount canceled over the previous two years, the E2 report notes.

“Clean energy companies still want to invest in America, but uncertainty over Trump administration policies and the future of critical clean energy tax credits are taking a clear toll,” E2 spokesman Michael Timberlake said in a statement.

The Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s massive climate law, extended renewable energy tax credits until at least 2032. Whether the Republican-controlled Congress will eliminate those tax credits is unclear.

“I think that market certainty has been stripped away for many of these technologies right now, and they’re feeling uneasy,” Neumann said. “And so it’s not surprising to me that we’re seeing a retraction in investment.”

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Even in red America, clean energy is booming. But now, huge renewable projects are dead. appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

The article presents a factual overview of the recent developments in renewable energy, particularly the increasing resistance and setbacks in clean energy projects in the United States. While the article details the progress in renewable energy and highlights concerns about the future of such projects under the current administration, it frames the issue within the broader context of environmental and policy debates. The use of terms such as “climate change,” “dismantling federal policies,” and “uncertainty over Trump administration policies” leans toward a more critical stance on current Republican policies, giving it a Center-Left tilt. It focuses on the negative consequences of policy changes rather than offering a balanced perspective of the differing political views on the matter. However, the article does not overtly push a particular political agenda, keeping the analysis grounded in facts. The presentation of both positive growth in renewable energy and the resulting challenges contributes to a generally neutral reporting style, albeit with a slight emphasis on environmental concerns that align with Center-Left ideologies.